It’s really not tough to bruise my ego. For a long time, I felt that this was a hurdle I had to clear if I stood a chance in the big, wide world. It clung to me like lint, and removing it was a strange hell. Besides, it was never long before it would cover me again.

I hold things a little too close for a little too long. I coat them in my very clumsy love. There is no such thing as forgetting.

Not for the girl who recalls every minute of your 7th birthday party. Not for the girl who knows every word to a jingle for a local car dealership that hasn’t kissed airwaves in at least a decade.

Hurt doesn’t fit inside my closet. Instead it spreads itself out like some kind of unwelcome guest. It is painfully obvious.

Only I’m not sure WHY it’s so painful. I don’t understand why it is considered noble to suffer in silence. I don’t know why being modest about the pain we feel is taken as an expression of strength. Maybe it’s easier for some people to compartmentalize suffering. Maybe they can store it in a cabinet and pull it out one drawer at a time. Maybe the cabinet remains dusty and untouched.

But I can’t.

There is no organizing my grief. There is no “save this for later.” There is no grace as I expel these feelings. I will cry until my skull feels like it is caving in, until my nose is so stuffed that breathing becomes an alarmingly difficult task.

I will do this because it is a choice.

Because I spent much too long sealing my feelings tightly in glass jars,

And because this is what I need to be whole again.

If a jar were to spill out of my open mouth onto concrete, and if the glass were to spider, would we call it fragile?

Why would’t we recognize its incredible durability? The odds have been beaten in front of us and all that we notice is the way the jagged lines meet each other as if it were a funeral.

Yes. I am fragile and delicate. But those are just cheap rip-offs of vulnerable and brave. I know what the ugliest parts of me look like. They are very real, and so it must be true that other parts are really quite extraordinary.

There is no forgetting what I know by heart. My soul attaches itself to every gorgeous detail of those I love. Because I cannot forget, I weave bits of them into every piece I write.

It’s these small, gorgeous, haunting details that remind me there is still time for the unimaginable to happen.